A girl carrying mangoes on her head descends to a village on the Olusosun landfill site in Nigeria. The Olusosun dump is Africa’s largest, comprising 100 acres of garbage and collecting 2,400 metric tonnes of rubbish every day from Lagos, one of the fastest-growing cities in the world. Lagos’s population has tripled in the past 15 years and the infrastructure can’t cope. Roughly 1,000 homes have been built on Olusosun – the residents collect scrap from the dump and sell it - Photograph: Jacob Silberberg/Panos

A man flying a kite in Tienanmen Square last Boxing Day. Pollution levels on a typical day in Beijing are five times above World Health Organization standards for safety, and are worse in the summer, worrying Olympic athletes. Three million cars and coal-fired factories, steel mills and skyscraper builds throughout the city have caused the smog. To ‘clean’ the air for the Olympics, Chinese authorities will take 1m cars off the road and are closing factories a month in advance - Photograph: Oded Balilty/AP

continued at: theguardian.co.uk

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